Impact of Watershed Development for the Fall River Watershed

A watershed-planning meeting was help at the Greenwood County USDA Service CenterEureka, Kansas on Thursday October 3, 2002. The purpose of the meeting was to address concerns thatvarious agencies had with the Fall River Watershed Districts request to revise the districts 404 permit. Theseagencies requested additional water quality data on the five-paired watersheds, comparing controlled and noncontrolledwatersheds. This data was collected on a frequent basis related to the seasonal hydrology of thewatershed. Samples were analyzed for turbidity, total suspended solids, dissolved oxygen, fecal bacterial, andtotal phosphorus. This data compares the environmental quality of water from these paired watersheds. Thisreport presents the results of the paired watershed water quality monitoring and analysis for five pairedwatersheds distributed throughout the watershed and five main branch locations in the Fall River WatershedDistrict #21 during 2003-04. This study demonstrates that controlled watersheds have the following features: Controlled watersheds tend to have lower peak flows and the flow is sustained for longer periodsduring dry weather. Turbidity and total suspended solid concentrations are lower in streams below controlled watersheds. Sediment and total phosphorus concentrations and loading are lower in streams below controlledwatersheds. Bacterial populations and loading are lower in streams below controlled watersheds. The reservoirs created in controlled watersheds act as a sink that captures contaminants that are stored inthe sediments in the lake or degraded by time in the lake water. If the land use practices above these lakes aremaintained in an environmentally proper way the lakes will continue to be a best management practiceprotecting and conserving the water resources that flow into and out of them.